MINUTE OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON INCIDENTS

Found paper — a single leaf from the incident registers at Murkminster, much handled at the fold. Re: a night at a withy stump, which the Committee was unable to establish had occurred.

THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON INCIDENTS · MURKMINSTER "An incident recorded is an incident concluded." MINUTE 4,112 · Taken in the matter of THE NIGHT AT THE WITHY STUMP (alleged)

The Committee convened to determine whether an incident had occurred at the withy stump on the low track below Castle Bastable, in the failed year, and if so what it had been, and who was to be charged with it, and what was paid, and by whom, and to whom — the Committee's function being to reduce a night to a row in a register, which is a thing it has done four thousand one hundred and eleven times without difficulty.

The Committee records its findings below, in the order in which they declined to be found.

ITEM. Whether a man was taken. The gate-captain of Castle Bastable, examined politely at his post — which the Committee notes was extremely clean — stated that he had spent a night away from his gate and had been assisted home. Asked by whom, he said: "by everyone." Asked to name the person or persons who had detained him, he said that no one had detained him, that he had been "held up," and that the distinction was his own and he would keep it. He then thanked the Committee for its interest and offered it tea. No complainant exists. An incident without a complainant is, by standing rule, a rumour.

ITEM. Whether a ransom was demanded. A paper is said to have existed, weighted under a stone, naming a price of ten potatoes. The paper could not be produced. The stone could be produced, but proved, on examination, to be a stone.

ITEM. Whether the said ransom was paid. The deep store of Castle Bastable was audited. The count was taken twice, by two clerks, and came out differently, and both counts are initialled, and the difference between them is — the Committee sets this down with reluctance — ten. The Committee declined to take a third count for fear of establishing a majority. The store ledger is therefore held to show that the ten potatoes in question were both disbursed and retained, which the Committee is advised is compelling evidence both for and against, a standard of proof with which this office has prior experience (see below).

ITEM. Whether any person of the parishes was involved. A man of the estate villages was interviewed at his peat-cutting, where he has been in steady work since the spring. He was civil, and fed the Committee's clerk, who reports that the man's children are loud, rude, and alive, and would not stop showing him a goose. No charge has been laid by any party. There is nothing to attach a charge to. A crime without a complainant, a note, a loss, or an accuser is not a crime; it is, at most, weather.

ITEM. The child. The gate-captain's daughter, who is spoken of in the parishes in terms the Committee declines to reproduce in a register, was asked, plainly and kindly, what had happened that night.

She said: "Certainly not."

The junior clerk, who is new, entered this as a refusal. The senior clerk, who is not, struck the entry through and wrote beneath it: that is not a refusal; that is the Haver answer; close the file.

RESOLVED, that the Committee is unable to establish that the incident occurred; RESOLVED FURTHER, that the Committee is equally unable to establish that it did not, the parishes being unanimous, warm, and entirely silent on the matter, in the manner of a valley that knows something all together and has agreed without a meeting that it is nobody's business at Murkminster; RESOLVED FINALLY, that the matter be entered under the only status the register holds for a thing attested by everyone and evidenced by no one, in use since 1672 —

PROBABLY HYPOTHETICAL

— and filed accordingly, in the drawer set aside for such matters, adjacent to the standing file on House Haver, which the clerks report made room for it without being asked.

No further entry is required. The matter is, in every sense the Committee has been able to establish, regular.

AT THE FOOT OF THE LEAF, IN PENCIL, IN A SMALL NEAT HAND THAT IS NOT A CLERK'S:

They sent three men to find out what happened. The three men were fed in four houses, offered a bed in two, and shown a goose. They have gone home knowing less than they came with, which the valley regards as a full and satisfactory exchange.

The pan is back on its nail in the Long Kitchen.

The gate is shining.